3 ms·

I'm just an average American with limited understanding of the "narratives" these days, but what's wrong with teaching CRT if it can help address disparities in

by afpx 5y ago

I'm just an average American with limited understanding of the "narratives" these days, but what's wrong with teaching CRT if it can help address disparities in criminal justice stats? The system doesn't seem as just as it should be, and the profession should try to fix that.

philjohn 5y ago
Nothing - it's been deliberately and systematically demonised and now is used as a stand in for any anti-racist teaching. It's an area of study, nothing more, nothing less. That one side of the political spectrum is hell-bent on cancelling it should give us pause for thought.
francisofascii 5y ago
Fair question. I would argue that is is the wrong way to fix injustice. If we want impartiality in the system, and the system in not impartial, we should not add more unfairness to try to balance out the system. It it like adding more bugs to software to try to counteract the existing bugs.
brimble 5y ago
"CRT" as a thing that political actors complain about, and "CRT" the academic topic, are basically unrelated. The former is a Frankenstein's monster bogey-man built from every bad-seeming thing its crafters could attach to it[1] in order to build a rhetorical weapon. Label bad things CRT until people associate it with bad things only, then start labeling things that are good but that you don't like CRT so people automatically hate it, since you've primed them to. Any relation to academic-related CRT is incidental. [1] Which is not a novel tactic, and it sure looks like that's what happened with this—but enough discussion of the process by some of those involved took place in the open that we don't just have to guess that that's what was going on, this time. This kind of process is carried out semi-publicly surprisingly often, I suppose because doing so is both easier and more effective than trying to keep it a secret, and, counterintuitively, evidence that it was a deliberate plan rarely seems to harm the effort or blunt its effect.
- sjg007 5y ago
  CRT has been adopted by a long line of book burners as a boogie man to get out Republican votes using this single issue item.
Damogran6 5y ago
Well...what's wrong with being anti-fascist? Or keeping the murderers and rapists from crossing our borders? They're a smoke-screen for getting a certain demographic worked up using fear.
soundnote 5y ago
But are disparities a problem, on their face? We're supposed to have a country of diverse cultures and people. Yet, somehow, these cultures are supposed to yield more or less equal rates of people interested in different fields, more or less equal rates of success across the academic ladder, etc. Every word spoken says "different", every actual piece of policy says "there should be no differences whatsoever". But if people's starting positions and cultures were different, they would certainly produce differential outcomes, even in a completely fair system. Mere disparity cannot be proof of bigotry.

by afpx 5y ago

philjohn 5y ago

Nothing - it's been deliberately and systematically demonised and now is used as a stand in for any anti-racist teaching. It's an area of study, nothing more, nothing less. That one side of the political spectrum is hell-bent on cancelling it should give us pause for thought.

francisofascii 5y ago

Fair question. I would argue that is is the wrong way to fix injustice. If we want impartiality in the system, and the system in not impartial, we should not add more unfairness to try to balance out the system. It it like adding more bugs to software to try to counteract the existing bugs.

brimble 5y ago

"CRT" as a thing that political actors complain about, and "CRT" the academic topic, are basically unrelated. The former is a Frankenstein's monster bogey-man built from every bad-seeming thing its crafters could attach to it[1] in order to build a rhetorical weapon. Label bad things CRT until people associate it with bad things only, then start labeling things that are good but that you don't like CRT so people automatically hate it, since you've primed them to. Any relation to academic-related CRT is incidental. [1] Which is not a novel tactic, and it sure looks like that's what happened with this—but enough discussion of the process by some of those involved took place in the open that we don't just have to guess that that's what was going on, this time. This kind of process is carried out semi-publicly surprisingly often, I suppose because doing so is both easier and more effective than trying to keep it a secret, and, counterintuitively, evidence that it was a deliberate plan rarely seems to harm the effort or blunt its effect.

sjg007 5y ago
CRT has been adopted by a long line of book burners as a boogie man to get out Republican votes using this single issue item.

Damogran6 5y ago

Well...what's wrong with being anti-fascist? Or keeping the murderers and rapists from crossing our borders? They're a smoke-screen for getting a certain demographic worked up using fear.

soundnote 5y ago

But are disparities a problem, on their face? We're supposed to have a country of diverse cultures and people. Yet, somehow, these cultures are supposed to yield more or less equal rates of people interested in different fields, more or less equal rates of success across the academic ladder, etc. Every word spoken says "different", every actual piece of policy says "there should be no differences whatsoever". But if people's starting positions and cultures were different, they would certainly produce differential outcomes, even in a completely fair system. Mere disparity cannot be proof of bigotry.